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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-04 Daily Xml
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Bills

South Australian Multicultural Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (16:17): I rise to support the bill. It is an important piece of legislation that will modernise. We know that for far too long what I would consider the outdated approach to multiculturalism has been front and centre of the concerns of this Marshall Liberal government, but, more importantly, the concerns of the multicultural society here in South Australia.

We know that for a very long time South Australia has been one of the most diverse multicultural societies in the country. It has a proud multicultural history, particularly in the Riverland, which has benefited from the large constituency of residents who are rich and diverse in cultural backgrounds. The Riverland is home to the one of the biggest multicultural communities in the state and immigrants are the backbone of our region. The Riverland is home to more than 60 different nationalities, making it one of the most diverse cultural regions in the state.

This bill will modernise and refresh what has been regarded as an out-of-date bill. It will bring in the multicultural charter and policies to serve our community far more extensively. We have seen multiculturalism here in South Australia as one of the great staples of our society. I would also like to pay respect to the Hon. Jing Lee in another place for the great work she has done on behalf of the government and Premier in bringing those cultural groups together to better understand how the government can support them and give them the recognition they deserve.

My background has been far, wide and varied and over many years, with not only my family farms employing a diverse range of nationalities but also working at General Motors Holden myself and doing an apprenticeship there. It was made up of a wide and varied multicultural society.

Many immigrants came to this country looking for opportunities and looking for work. We have seen many of them, whether as part of a skilled workforce on the tool room floor or part of a semiskilled workforce on the production lines. The multiculturalism, particularly in the car manufacturing industry, was an absolute staple, and particularly at GMH.

Moving on to another career in the oil and gas sector, I would also like to recognise a different skill set. People from all over the globe came there, mostly with speciality skills. The oil industry is wide and varied, and it not only requires a lot of skill to extract precious gases and condensates but it requires the skills of those who are globally recognised. I was a young fellow coming away from small business in South Australia and what I saw there just beggared belief—the skill set that came from all parts of the globe and being part of what is considered one of the nation's most enriched natural resources, the oil and gas and condensate sector.

Upon leaving there I moved to the Riverland to venture into irrigated horticulture. It gave me the opportunity to realise how valuable different nationalities are. I would like to name a few of the nationalities that came through my gate to help not only with developing properties, whether it was planting, training or pruning, but at picking time, when it was time to put fruit into bins or into sheds. There were many different nationalities who helped.

I want to recognise the majority of them. I remember backpackers in the early days were various nationalities. There were Europeans, Spaniards, Germans, French, Italians and, of course, Greeks. The property became widely recognised very quickly as a highly productive property and so I was then looking for a much more reliable workforce. When I say reliable, I needed large groups of those workers to come in and pick large volumes of fruit so that we could actually supply sheds. That is when I had the pleasure of employing full time the Spanos family, a very highly regarded and respected Greek family in the Riverland.

They would turn up in the dark every morning and have their cup of tea and then as soon as day broke they would get on with it. They were an absolute staple for my business. Along the way I had many good experiences with them. I had many good experiences with the Indian, Sikh and Punjabi nationalities who came in. As I said, if you have a good property and a highly productive property it is a magnet for that workforce to come in. Of course, the Turkish community also made their presence felt, as did the Cambodians, the Croatians, the Yugoslavs, the Afghanis and the Filipinos.

The Filipino community in the Riverland is really one of the communities that goes under the radar. As I understand it, in the Murraylands and the Riverland there are 570 Filipinos living there and doing great things for their culture, not only as a reliable workforce but also with their cultural diversity and their ability to engage with Riverland communities. They have shed a light and educated me on not only their work practices but also their food. Their food is outstanding. It was nothing unusual for me to be sitting with them at lunchtime enjoying some of the great food that they would bring along to spoil me because they love sharing.

Of course, the South African, the Chinese and the Lebanese workforces have all been a part of my business over a long period of time. It really has given me an appreciation and a much clearer understanding of cultural diversity and also of the type of customs they have. They are very pedantic about instilling those customs on their friends and family. More so, they would instil them in me, and it was very much highlighted particularly by their food and their customs after hours. At one point in time I found myself almost at a social event many times a week with family members from those different cultures.

If I weave my way around the Riverland, there was always an opinion of those cultural centres that traversed some of those Riverland towns. At Waikerie in the early days there were many Italian families. They were drawn to Waikerie predominantly through the vegetable sector and the citrus industry. At Barmera we have the Hellenic Club, so obviously there were many Greeks at Barmera, particularly down at the lake. Berri was an unusual town—not to say that the English are unusual, but they certainly made themselves very much part of the Berri community.

Loxton, which is home to one of the great German cultures in South Australia, still to this day is a very proud community with a very strong and rich German heritage. Renmark has a Greek population. As I understand it, per head of population it was the second highest population of Greeks in Australia. For a small Riverland community that was just outstanding. We cannot forget the Gerard Mission, which was made up of our First Nations Aboriginal people. They were a very important part of the Riverland's multiculturalism from a very early stage. Multiculturalism in the Riverland has been a significant part of the Riverland's heritage, and it has been such an important part of opportunity.

Those multicultural groups that came to the Riverland saw hope, they saw opportunity and I saw a way that they could actually work hard, they could earn their money and then they could one day realise their dream—to buy land, to buy agriculture, to raise a family and be a part of today's modern society. They worked collaboratively. In many instances, many of them were masters in the way that they collaborated. Their families came together, they worked together and they worked as groups to satisfy the needs of some of the horticulturalists so that they could get their crops off, get it into the pack houses and get it to market. To do that they were rewarded well. It was very hard work.

As I have said over recent times, particularly with the agriculture sector looking for a workforce, those multicultural communities—some more than others—would come to the fore. They would work hard. They would make the economy bounce along. But just as importantly, they were part of an economy that needed a workforce. If we look at the electorate of Chaffey, it is the largest fresh potato and onion growing electorate in the Southern Hemisphere—that takes labour. If we look at the citrus industry, it is one of South Australia's largest horticultural sectors, as is summer fruit, as is the almond sector. This all requires a workforce, and it requires a workforce that is prepared to work, be productive and get on with it.

We all know that the Riverland is the engine room of the wine industry, producing some 480,000 tonnes of wine grapes, but that needs a workforce behind it not only in the vineyards planting, training, feathering, growing and pruning but it also needs a workforce there to get it out of the paddock, into the wineries and making sure that we get it out of the wineries into containers and out there to the world.

They were always masters at planting, training, picking, processing, packing, and they were part of a very valuable economic chain in making sure that all the ag sectors were suitably serviced by a workforce that was prepared to work. I give all of them their dues. They come out, they work hard and they play their part.

I also acknowledge Norman Schueler in the gallery. Norman is part of the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission. I have just had a conversation with him about an emerging multicultural society coming into South Australia, and, importantly, coming into the Riverland, and that is the Pacific Islanders, the program that the Pacific Islands are now offering the horticulture sector.

It is about people coming in and harvesting our produce, our valuable produce. Nowadays, we are harvesting high-value commodities. They have to be harvested in a timely fashion and they have to be harvested in a way that we can get it to the processors, get it into containers, get it onto trucks and get it to markets. Whether it is domestically or globally, it is vitally important that we have a reliable workforce that is prepared to be a part of that.

The Tongans, the Vanuatu and the Kiribati people, the Fijians and the New Guineans, to name a few of those Pacific islanders, will be a valuable part of not only the Riverland's economy: they will play a larger role in South Australia's ag sector. They may come away from the Riverland; potentially, they will work in the red meat sector and the vegetable industry, but more importantly, they are looking for opportunities.

They are looking for opportunities that previous ethnic groups that came into South Australia were looking for. That was opportunity, that was looking for hope and the ability to raise a family, to earn some money and then be landowners. We all know that in any society nowadays people are looking to create wealth. They are looking to own land, and that is what has been a big driver in the multicultural society up in the Riverland.

Getting back to the bill, on the 14th anniversary of the SAMEAC Act, I guess the bill is timely. It is a reaffirmation of the importance of multiculturalism here in South Australia. It reasserts the Marshall Liberal government's commitment to continue to promote and support the contemporary South Australian multicultural community.

As I have said, the Marshall Liberal government has put an absolute, very firm focus on multiculturalism in South Australia. As a government, it is our responsibility to give all those multicultural groups the opportunity to interact more with our community, to give them the opportunity to be better represented when it comes to government, when it comes to society and when it comes to being part of a community.

I know that I have had many conversations with other MPs looking to interact with some of those multicultural societies coming into their electorates, coming into their industries. We look at ways that we can have them better interact. We look at ways that we can have them come in and have them not fostered into a community but given pairs of families that will introduce them to the sporting community, introduce them to social groups and give them opportunities that focus on being part of a community, not giving them reason to exile over to a small corner of a regional community or a metropolitan community.

We know that some of the visitors who come from another part of the globe come and look and think that their skills are in areas other than agriculture, but I would say that every nationality has a strength. Every nationality has a passion and every nationality has a will to be a part of a community, whether it is smaller or larger. It is a valuable exercise for all of us in this chamber to better understand how valuable their contribution to our modern-day society is.

The consultation process has been spread far and wide. I know that that consultation process came up to the Riverland. Whether at the temple at Glossop, the Punjabi temple at Renmark or the Lebanese mosque at Renmark, my interactions at many of the community centres where I have had the opportunity to meet, eat and socialise with these people have given me an opportunity to appreciate who they are and their cultural differences.

That has given me a much clearer understanding of the type of people they are and the types of needs they have because not every multicultural group is the same; in fact, many of them are very much different from the next. They all have common goals, they all share the dreams and they come from far and wide.

That is why am very proud to say that we have embraced the 60 or so nationalities in the Riverland. We have given them opportunity. We have given them a welcoming embrace in bringing them into our community, making sure that if, there is an opportunity or a talent scout out there, we get them to a sporting club and give them opportunities for new sporting codes for them to embrace. We make sure they are part of those festivals, those street parties, and we make sure that they can interact and be part of what I consider is one of the best regional communities.

This bill is a part of that. Some of the stories I have just talked about are about their being part of this new modern bill that this government is bringing before this place today. The multicultural charter will present a better opportunity. It will mean there is a better institution here in South Australia. It is ably led by the Attorney today. It is a passion of the Premier and a passion of every member of this government to make South Australia a more diverse multicultural state.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta—Minister for Education) (16:36): It is a great pleasure to be here today in this house or, as we will often say in Morialta: 'È un grande piacere essere qui in questa casa oggi.' The South Australian multicultural experience is incredibly rich and indeed the envy of many societies and communities around the world. It is built not just on an accident of good circumstance and good fortune but on the hard work of many communities. When they came to South Australia, those trailblazers worked so hard to establish their families and their communities in South Australia, to participate in the life of South Australia and to help to make our state more diverse and our enjoyment of life more rich and colourful, but it was not always easy.

I do not think that rose-coloured glasses about everything in our past necessarily can be only applied. We also need to acknowledge that there were some very difficult circumstances facing different generations of people coming to South Australia at different times. Some people had to break down barriers with the sweat of their hard work over many years to get to where we are today.

I particularly commend all those people in communities who did struggle with discrimination against them, whether it be in the schoolyard or in a workplace. I acknowledge the struggles that many people went through to achieve the strong foundations for their multicultural communities in South Australia, whether it is in the fifties or earlier, or in the seventies; the communities were different. Our community and our state has become better through the application and effort of so many who worked so hard.

It was also very important that government policy respond to the needs of a changing community. Indeed, it was visionary, I would suggest, during the era of the Tonkin government in particular and, I think Murray Hill was the minister—I see Norman Schueler nodding at me, so I trust that I am correct here. Murray Hill did this work and it was critically important in establishing the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission more than 40 years ago now. That framework was incredibly useful for South Australia to really affirm that it was not just a confluence of events. Through the arrival of communities from overseas they formed a place in South Australia and people were starting to enjoy each other's company and get along better.

But it was in fact government policy, supported by all sides of parliament—the Conservative side, the Liberal side, the Labor side, the Greens and Democrats, everyone else in the parliament. They were supportive of this framework of multiculturalism within which we understood the South Australian community would be able to prosper.

I congratulate all the parents of those reforms in the 1970s. I thank them for the efforts they have made. I thank the generations of community leaders who have supported the work of SAMEAC over its 40 years. Currently, Norman Schueler is the Chair of SAMEAC and he has many outstanding predecessors. I thank all those commissioners over the years and all the people who have worked in government.

The work of the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission has supported government policy in many ways. It has supported communities in many ways. The trailblazing roles of many of those commissioners, not just as commissioners but in the communities from where they have come and who they are representing, have been tremendously important. It has helped new communities coming to Australia to have the advice of the more well-established communities who were already here.

In my own local area, we have a range of different multicultural communities. My current boundaries include a town like Lobethal, which is German for Valley of Praise, where the migrants who came from Prussia in the 19th century fleeing religious persecution were able to find a home in South Australia. Eventually those 12 families, along with their pastor, were able to come to Lobethal to form a community where they could practise their religion freely. They could celebrate their culture, a culture which is still celebrated in the town to this very day. It is absolutely tremendous. It has helped create that region of the Adelaide Hills in the Morialta district to be what it is.

Again, I am reminded that it has not always been easy. The Blumberg Hotel in the town of Birdwood reminds us that the town of Birdwood did not used to be called Birdwood. It was called Blumberg. So many communities—in response to events happening in Europe, and understandably to some it was a significant loss—had German drummed out of them at that time. Some of them have regained it. Hahndorf is again called Hahndorf. Birdwood is now Birdwood. They have retained that heritage through recognition of what has happened. The message for us today is that we value that language and that culture for the communities coming to South Australia to be retained.

The dominant multicultural community in my area, certainly under the new boundaries but even under the old boundaries as well, is people of Italian heritage. There are 100,000 South Australians of Italian heritage and many of them live in Morialta, which is a great joy to me. I have three living in my house. The impact of the Italian community on my local area, indeed on the whole of South Australia, is very difficult to understate. It is impossible to imagine South Australia without the extraordinary contribution made by the Italian community.

People from Italy came to South Australia in small numbers in the 19th century, in larger numbers in the 1920s, but the postwar migration period was an extraordinary explosion of Italian culture and life in the late 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Many families, with nonno in our family's case, came to Australia. Maybe they came with their friends, maybe having been encouraged to come to South Australia because they could get work and they could send money home to help support the family back at home. Often it was mum and the kids back in a town, whether it was Molinara or Altavilla Irpina or Paduli or a town very familiar to my family in San Giorgio La Molara.

The experience of so many families, not just in Campania and across Italy, was that the money that could be earnt in Australia was good money and dad could keep sending money home. Eventually, two, three or four years later, the whole family might have come out. What an impact they have had.

It was not always easy, though, for some of those families. Many people around South Australia were encouraging their children not to speak Italian at home—not just Italian; this is something familiar in other cultures too—but to learn English. It was because of a desire to integrate and work hard. We value the hard work and the impact it has had, but we have lost something in that lack of language. For my children, we are so grateful that they can speak to their nonno. Nonno speaks to them in Italian. I want them to have every opportunity to engage with their cultural heritage.

I think one of our key messages as parliamentarians—and I am sure we all do it when we are talking at citizenship ceremonies—is to encourage new South Australians who come from communities and countries where they have a language other than English that it is a gift. It is a gift to be able to share that with your children so that as they learn English they can also have that connection with the language of their parents, their heritage and their culture.

That is a gift to the broader South Australian community, too, because not only do they then have agency that is enhanced by that language but having more and more people in South Australia who speak multiple languages is tremendously to the benefit of our economic future as well. We know that multilingualism assists in the way students can progress in all their other subjects at school, just to name the school students.

It is also great to have many people in South Australia who are able to engage with people from different countries. It helps with our intercultural understanding. I will come back to the use of the word 'intercultural' in its application to this bill in a moment, but I am sure that all members would join with me in encouraging new migrants to Australia to keep telling the stories of their heritage and their culture to their children as they bring them up in South Australia's multicultural community. That is tremendously valuable for a number of reasons.

I hope that when my children are in the schoolyard when attending school, they will have some Italian. They may learn some other languages too, if we are very fortunate. Hopefully, they will love doing so. I hope they will be able to talk about the stories of their nonno, bisnonno and bisnonna coming to Australia and the extraordinary sacrifices and courage that their bisnonna and bisnonno showed in coming to South Australia, an entirely new country, a new society and a new language but with new opportunities. They made great friends and they have made a great contribution to our community.

I want my children to be able to tell those stories to their friends and learn the stories of the heritage and culture that they come into contact with as well. That is what I desire as a parent and I am sure many do too, but as government policy goes, we also need to have an active stance on ensuring that our structure and framework is contemporaneous, modern and best able to support the communities that are coming to South Australia now.

As I said, the leadership of SAMEAC has been doing a lot of this work over many years. I am really grateful that SAMEAC has been proactive in participating in citizenship ceremonies. The member for Hartley and I are regular attendees at the Campbelltown citizenship ceremony, for example, where we have been really glad in the last few years that SAMEAC has had a commissioner participate and share their own story of their journey to Australia with the people there, making sure they know they are welcome. New citizens are welcome, and their own stories are celebrated too.

There are many communities throughout Morialta, not just the German and Italian heritage communities. There are many people from South Asia and Central Asia and an increasing number of people from Africa. No longer is our community just focused on celebrating Christmas and Easter as our major religious celebrations but we have many opportunities to celebrate Eid, to celebrate the Lunar New Year, to celebrate Pongal and to celebrate Diwali. Many of these have festivals that take place in our public spaces and our parks, and throughout our community many of them benefit from support through government grants and Multicultural SA.

As Minister for Education, I am particularly encouraged to be responsible for supporting our Ethnic Schools Association and our community language schools throughout South Australia. We have more than 100 community language schools, from the smallest and newest—we had a new one this year, which we were pleased to provide the teacher accreditations to at a celebration recently—to schools like the Vietnamese school. Binh Nguyen was telling me they have well in excess of 1,000 students at their three sites. It is an extraordinary volunteer effort. Indeed, some of these schools are big enough to support paid staff. Being able to share language and share culture with the children of those communities adds a lot to South Australia.

I was pleased that the former government increased support for the Ethnic Schools Association in their last year in office. Not to be outdone, this government had to therefore increase it further, because there was still more work to be done. I am really pleased that we were able to give the most significant per-student increase in decades to our Ethnic Schools Association and all of those community language schools when we came to office.

The bill today will do a number of things. The SAMEAC has served us well for 40 years and continues to serve us well, but I think the bill can offer enhancements to that. I think it is really important that the way that language is used in the SAMEAC Act is contemporised. The driving factors informing the current framework were relevant in the 1970s. Of course, the experience of communities in more recent times has been different and the challenges they face are different. In many circumstances they are coming from very different backgrounds potentially than they did before. The existing government frameworks within which those challenges were faced have changed as well.

Our schooling system has really strong, intensive English language programs, supporting particularly students from refugee programs, or really any students who need that extra support in the English language, to be able to successfully participate in our education system. At the moment, that program is seeing fewer students coming in, but there is a level of expertise in that workforce that is very profound and significant.

When the borders are lifted after the pandemic comes to its conclusion, or at least our society gets to the point where vaccinations mean we can lift those borders at a national level, we fully expect that system to come on track again. In the 1970s, of course there were good teachers in the system, supporting students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, but it was not remotely in the same professional way that it is now.

There are 40 years' worth of supports from multicultural grants, SAMEAC and Multicultural Affairs SA that the current situation is able to build on. The bill reaffirms the importance of multiculturalism to South Australia. It reasserts the commitment of our government to continue to serve and deliver for the contemporary South Australian multicultural community. When debate is concluded and the legislation has passed, I hope that the improvements will make sure it provides a framework for government's interaction with the multicultural community in South Australia that will last for another 40 years. Time will tell, but I am very optimistic and confident that the improvements in the bill will help.

I look forward to the reflections from the opposition in the weeks to come. I commend the shadow minister for multicultural affairs, the member for Ramsay, on her return to this portfolio. She served as the Minister for Multicultural Affairs during the period when I was the shadow minister for multicultural affairs from 2016 to 2018. She may have even preceded that appointment by several months, but I know that this is an area that she enjoyed working in in government. I am sure that she will appreciate the opportunity to re-engage as the shadow minister in this role. In commending her on her appointment as shadow minister for multicultural affairs, I offer my congratulations and my sincere hope that she will continue to be the shadow minister for multicultural affairs for many, many years to come.

I look forward seeing her at many events at the community language schools, which I serve as Minister for Education in the multicultural electorate of Morialta. I look forward to seeing her at those events. I hope that she will represent the Labor opposition for decades. The Labor Party could not do better for a shadow spokesperson from their ranks than the member for Ramsay. I look forward to seeing her positive and constructive engagement with the government on getting the best possible outcomes. I am absolutely certain that she will massively enhance the work that was done by her predecessor. In my experience, the member for Ramsay is quite sincere in her engagement and I am very sincere in my congratulations to her.

I want also to reflect in thanking Norman Schueler, who, as the Speaker identified earlier, is not only the chair of the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission but also the longstanding president of South Australia's Jewish Affairs Council, and I think I have the title right. Late last year and this year saw the launch of a very important new institution recognising the particular challenges and circumstances of Mr Schueler's own community, the Jewish community, in South Australia—the Holocaust Museum and Andrew Steiner Education Centre in Wakefield House just off Victoria Square, next to the Catholic archdiocese buildings.

As Minister for Education, I am really pleased to have played a role in providing funding to the Steiner Centre and the Holocaust Museum in developing their education program and, indeed, as the minister responsible for the History Trust, which has provided further funding to their establishment. I commend the Morrison federal government, in particular James Stevens, the member for Sturt, and Josh Frydenberg, the Treasurer, in their provision of $2½ million for the further development of that program.

I commend all the board and all the people working on it, and I know that it, too, will play a really important role in South Australia's multicultural future. I commend to every member the museum and I encourage you all to pay it a visit.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services) (16:56): Buona sera. It is an absolute pleasure for me to speak on the South Australian Multicultural Bill and I do so as a very proud grandson of Italian migrants who left post World War II Italy to come to Australia seeking a better life. I have often said that I would describe our rich South Australian community as a somewhat beautiful mosaic, with all these different pieces and different cultures coming together.

It goes without saying that we are certainly enriched as a state, as our local communities are, for these countries and these cultures coming together. In my own community in my own electorate of Hartley, I acknowledge what a privilege it is to serve a very large and diverse community with many multicultural communities coming together. Sir, you would know that certainly not many weekends would go by when I am not at one of these multicultural community events.

For example, I would say the majority of weekends I would spend some time at one of the Italian festas, whether it be the Festa of San Pellegrino, the Festa of the Montevergine or an array of other feasts. They are certainly well attended and I especially commend the Italian community in my area, who continue to follow those traditions to enrich our state by bringing their traditions, their food, their culture and their language.

There are also many weekends when I attend various Diwali Mela celebrations. The Indian community is certainly a community that is growing. It is one of the fastest, if not the fastest, growing communities here in South Australia, and I have had the good fortune of visiting that country. In South Australia, we are extremely lucky to have a proud and growing Indian community.

In my local area, the Chinese community is also quite a large community. Recently, of course, we celebrated the Year of the Ox and the Chinese New Year, and I was able to attend both central and local celebrations for the Chinese New Year. Of course, there are also citizenship ceremonies. I do my very best to make sure I attend every one of my citizenship ceremonies.

In the event that I cannot attend, I certainly make sure I follow up all my new citizens. It is with great pride that I support those citizenship ceremonies, and it is a real joy to be able to see where our new Australians are coming in. They all have a unique, diverse story to tell. I often invite them back to Parliament House, because I think it is important that we invest in our new communities.

I remember my grandparents would often say that when they were new arrivals they certainly remember the politicians who reached out to them. Unfortunately, some of them said that Don Dunstan was quite a charismatic politician in the seat of Norwood, where some of my grandparents lived at the time, and they remembered what Don Dunstan would do. It would make me remember what they would say about that. Later it was Dean Brown and John Olsen. My grandparents would often talk about these leaders in their community, and they would get to these events that they would hold, and they really appreciated the investment politicians made in the local community.

It is incumbent upon us to make sure that we invest in our local communities, our multicultural communities, especially where we are able to assist them. Often when these communities come here, some people might not have a thorough understanding, for example, of certain processes or there might be language barriers. It is incumbent on us to do all we can to make sure that we help to make their transition a little bit easier when they come to South Australia, and make sure that they go on to do good things in our state.

This has obviously been nothing but a great land of opportunity for our multicultural communities, and it is very important that we do all we can to ensure that those multicultural communities continue to thrive. It goes without saying that thriving multicultural communities have certainly been one of the major engine rooms from South Australia's point of view.

Coming to the bill at hand, the government has brought in the South Australian Multicultural Bill 2020, which is the subject of what we are talking about today. Recently, the government conducted a legislative review of the SAMEAC Act to help shape what is new legislation. The consultation phase of the review featured various fora and certainly different workshops, a number of written submissions and also online fora and survey. Recently, up to even this week, a number of members have been contacted about this bill.

Key themes from the consultation were that the concept of multiculturalism should be modernised to reflect what are certainly changes and practices from some decades ago, to also modernising SAMEAC's functions. I acknowledge our very hardworking Chair of SAMEAC, Mr Norman Schueler, who is here present in the gallery today. I commend the work of SAMEAC. Only recently, I had the pleasure of catching up with Mr George Chin, and I thank him for his service and his leadership role in the Chinese community. It was great to catch up with him during Chinese New Year celebrations as well, and all the other members of SAMEAC—people like Maria Maglieri and others—who do a wonderful job in promoting a multicultural community in South Australia.

It has also been said that the legislation certainly should recognise Aboriginal South Australians as carriers of the original cultures in this state, but also to make sure that multicultural principles are included in the legislation. Of course, we also want to contemporise the language in the SAMEAC Act. I am confident that the South Australian Multicultural Bill 2020 reflects much of the feedback that was received during the consultation, and it has been presented far and wide.

After extensive consultation, our government has introduced the bill that will replace the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission Act. It also builds stronger and more vibrant multicultural communities. It is good to see that the bill will modernise the language used to refer to multiculturalism and also reform the current multicultural commission. It also requires the development of a multicultural charter that will lay a foundation for the development of future government policies and also better services for our community. There may be some questions about that perhaps at the committee stage, and I know the Attorney-General will answer those if they do arise.

The bill certainly reaffirms the importance of multiculturalism to South Australia and it does reassert our government's commitment to continue to serve and also deliver for the contemporary South Australian multicultural community. As I pointed out, this is a multicultural community that continues to change. When I was first elected in 2014, it was certainly a diverse landscape, and it will keep changing, so it is only appropriate that, as community expectations change, as the community itself changes as well, our laws, which we bring forward on behalf of our communities as a government, continue to change with those expectations.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of the many volunteers who volunteer for the diverse range of multicultural groups in my own electorate. To the many clubs, the various array of organisations we have out there—be they religious or otherwise, sporting organisations (often some of those are linked as well), community groups, not-for-profits—I thank them for the good work they do.

Only recently, for example, I was at the Campania Club. I was ably joined by the member for Newland, as well as the member for King, the member for Florey, various other members and the Minister for Education. It was a real pleasure to be able to thank many of the volunteers who were out there. These community groups are the backbone of our community. Often many of these volunteers will donate hours each and every week. Often decades of their life are dedicated to these good causes, so I thank them for that.

They certainly hold our community together. We are very proud to have them, and I hope these clubs and these organisations, be they religious, sporting, community or otherwise, continue to be very successful into the future with what I am sure we could describe as the ongoing changes in the community. A lot of these community groups were set up after the post World War II migration phase that Australia went through, and we are seeing now that a number of these organisations are passing on the baton and that is a very good thing.

They are opening up to other cultures as well and, through those diverse cultures coming together, they are further enriched. I look at some of my local community groups that are going through that transition at the moment. Just as they are going through that transition, we see new organisations, new cultures, setting up their own clubs and their own organisations as well. It is a real privilege to be able to serve as a member of parliament with such a diverse, rich number of cultures in my own electorate.

From a portfolio area, I also acknowledge the wonderful work the departments do in making sure that they run tailored programs, be they language programs or culturally sensitive programs, making sure that we communicate well with our various cultures and that we are as inclusive as possible. That is certainly a good thing as well.

In wrapping up, I will not hold up too much of the house's time, but I do thank each and every one of the organisations, people who have contributed to this bill. As I said, it is only natural that a whole range of feedback has been provided. I know that certain questions, if they have arisen, will certainly be fleshed out and answered. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms LUETHEN (King) (17:09): I rise to support the South Australian Multicultural Bill. As the member for Hartley has just said, we are enriched as a state by our multicultural community. After extensive consultation, the Marshall Liberal government has introduced the South Australian Multicultural Bill with the aim of refreshing and modernising the approach to multiculturalism, raising awareness of interculturalism and building even stronger and more vibrant multicultural communities in South Australia.

The bill modernises the language used to refer to multiculturalism and reforms the current multicultural commission. It delivers in collaboration with the multicultural community a multicultural charter that will lay a foundation for the development of future government policies and better services for our whole community.

This bill reaffirms the importance of multiculturalism to South Australia and reasserts our government's commitment to continue to serve and deliver for the contemporary South Australian multicultural community. South Australia has been a leader in multicultural affairs legislation for a long time, and as a state with a proud and justified reputation in this area it is vital that we continue to underpin our policies, programs and activities with contemporary legislation.

To expand thinking beyond multiculturalism, the concept of interculturalism was incorporated into the legislation as being inclusive, contemporary and encouraging the exchange of ideas between communities. The bill also refines the functions of the renamed multicultural commission, which will be well placed to lead a shift in our thinking about multiculturalism and interculturalism. It also modernises its operations to ensure transparency and consistency with the policy and guidelines for South Australian government boards and committees.

The government thanks all those who were involved in the consultation period for their passion and interest in modernising our state's multicultural laws and is determined to pass this bill as it will deliver better services and policies for our community. On the 40th anniversary of the SAMEAC Act, this bill is a timely reaffirmation of the importance of multiculturalism to South Australia, and it reasserts the Marshall Liberal government's commitment to continue to promote and support our South Australian multicultural community.

Talking on this bill also provides me with a timely opportunity to promote some wonderful upcoming and recent events I have attended. One wonderful upcoming multicultural event is the Holi on the Beach colour festival, which is absolutely fabulous and great family fun. The fifth annual event, Holi on the Beach 2021, will be held at the same favourite location, Semaphore Beach, on 28 March. This is a free family event, and I thank Amit Katiyar and his wife, Neelam Katiyar, for all their efforts in past years and this year to bring this special day alive in South Australia.

For people who have not attended this event, it is a fun family colour festival. There is dancing and throwing and smearing of wonderful, safe, vibrant colour powders, and the air becomes thick with this colour powder, not to mention that people become very colourful too. It is a family event with live music, dance and great fun, and we would love the community to join us. The people there are a reflection of people from across the community.

I know my colleagues the Minister for Innovation and Skills and the Minister for Police, Vincent Tarzia, have attended in the past to speak at the event and have fun as well, though I am not sure they have got quite as much colour on them as I have. I wish to thank all the local businesses that set up their tents at this event and provide wonderful food for us to share and those businesses that sponsor the event, which makes having a free event possible.

I also thank the Port Adelaide Enfield council who have continued to contribute and support this event each year. With vibrant multiculturalism in mind, today I also wish to acknowledge Mayor Gillian Aldridge. I have three council areas in King—Salisbury, Playford and City of Tea Tree Gully—and so I get to attend on a regular basis all three citizenship ceremonies on behalf of King constituents. They are all very special and all very different.

One of the most multicultural ceremonies is at the City of Salisbury and I really enjoy the way Mayor Gillian Aldridge makes everyone feel important, welcome and proud to be living in the City of Salisbury and in South Australia. I really do commend her commitment to her community members and have to say that I love the way she asks everyone at the end of every ceremony, once they have become Australians, to all say together, 'Oi, oi, oi.'

With COVID, we have had to adapt the way in which the City of Salisbury has run this ceremony but she still makes every effort to make new citizens feel so important. I feel so proud at each of these community events, seeing the pride that people have in becoming an Australian. I love doorknocking in the City of Salisbury, too, and seeing the different people from different cultural backgrounds all building the wonderful vibrant community we have today.

It is not easy for some of these individuals. At the last City of Salisbury event, I met a lovely new citizen who looked very sad, and I was surprised by how sad he looked after becoming an Australian, because he had been separated from his wife for three years. She was stuck in another country, still trying to get here to become an Australian. He had hoped to become an Australian with her and this why he was so sad. Of course, I offered my help to follow up her application, and to make sure they are following all the right processes to be able to apply to get her here and reunite them as a couple. What a struggle they have been through, but they continue as they really want to join us in South Australia.

Again, I commend the City of Salisbury for all they do to also run welcome community lunches and dinners to support all new members joining our community and to make everyone feel welcome, included and connected. In the City of Tea Tree Gully recently, I attended a wonderful event at the Golden Grove Recreation Centre, and I wish to express my gratitude toward the entire team who worked hard to present a seamless and beautifully crafted event by the Adelaide Bangladeshi Cultural Club—the Spring Festival 2021—at the Golden Grove Recreation Centre.

A big shout-out to all the guests who were present and made us feel like we were sitting in a home surrounded by the most amazing crowd, who were continuously cheering all the performers on from start to end. There was lots of art and performances. It was a wonderful event, spreading the love of art, culture, music and dance, celebrating a blend of western and Bangladeshi cultures. it was absolutely lovely.

I would like to give my heartiest thanks to the Adelaide Bangladeshi Cultural Club and a huge shout-out to the children who performed their absolutely gorgeous and outstanding dance performances, beautifully choreographed by Anamika Apu. I also want to mention the outstanding artwork, which was all over the stage, which held so much meaning, bringing the event to life and really contributing to the atmosphere. The singing, art and dancing really transported us from Golden Grove. We could have been anywhere in the world.

The Adelaide Bangladeshi Cultural Club held this amazing Welcome to Spring Festival in my electorate and their fashion culture, music, singing and delicious food was just so beautiful and we are so lucky that we do not have to travel far to participate in such special celebrations from around the world.

I wish to note a message that I try to share at every citizenship event where I have the honour of speaking, and that is to keep these beautiful cultures and traditions alive and share these with our friends from all different backgrounds. This month I will be making my Austrian knödel, which are potato dumplings filled with plums and apricots and rolled in sweet bread crumbs, a recipe shared with me by my Austrian grandma. I make these each year and invite my closest friends and family to share in this tradition. It takes me all day and lots of mess to make them, but sharing this meal is worth it. It is important for us to keep alive these traditions that bring people together, that bring families together, that make us smile and appreciate each other and that allow us to celebrate as a community in even the simplest of ways.

Some of the most welcoming families I have met when I am doorknocking are some of the families from cultural backgrounds different from mine. I fondly remember many times when I have knocked and said what I am doing, where I am from and that I represent the community and people have invited their whole family out to meet me and to tell me what is on their mind and what they would like to see. That does not always happen with all families but it seems to happen more often when there are different cultural backgrounds.

Over the past seven years whilst serving the community I have been welcomed at so many different cultural events and I have learned so much from these communities. Another one of these special communities in my area, with many people living in Hillbank, is the Cambodian community, who have been incredibly welcoming. I love attending their events and I thank Sarou for including me. About a year ago, they even invited me to help them select people for their community liaison positions to help out in the community and I enjoyed working closely with them.

I cannot talk about our multicultural community without mentioning the Campania Club. The member for Hartley mentioned that he, the member for Newland, the Minister for Education and I were there just recently, celebrating the 45th anniversary of the Campania Club. I want to do a quick call out and thanks to Elvira, Luisa and John for their 45 years of work to make that club so special. I remember, early in my twenties, when I used to go along with my family to that club. It is just a very special place.

In closing today, I would like to thank Norman Schueler, Chair of SAMEAC, for attending today and for all his efforts in leading our multicultural community and contributing toward education, awareness and the harmonious community that we enjoy today. I thank the assistant minister for multicultural affairs for supporting this bill and bringing it here and for helping us create the most vibrant and harmonious community in South Australia. I commend this bill to the house.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (17:22): Thank you very much for the opportunity to rise on behalf of the people of Stuart to talk about the South Australian Multicultural Bill 2020. As I regularly say to my colleagues and friends, when your last name is van Holst Pellekaan, every day is multicultural day. Everywhere you go, everything you do, whoever you see, there is a multicultural flavour to it; however, it is also important for me to make very clear that in many ways, at least to the Dutch community, I am a dreadful disappointment.

I was born in Australia with half-Dutch blood, but I cannot speak Dutch and I have never been to Holland. I do not want to claim too much right off the bat. Yes, I do have half-Dutch blood but, to the Dutch, I am not much of a Dutchman. Having said that, though, even in my life, it has a very significant impact.

In 1937, my father came from Indonesia to Australia for the first time as a two year old with his Dutch family. His father was a trade commissioner to Australia and they actually moved back and forth between Amsterdam, Melbourne and Jakarta a few times before deciding that settling in Australia was the way to go. People who know the history of all three of those countries back then would have an understanding why that would have been a very attractive decision.

I have to say that my family on my father's side never looked back. They spoke Dutch at home very happily and the generation above me still does. Even in that way, there is an immediate impact. My father, when he married my mother, whose family had been in Australia for quite a few generations, was contemplating what they would do with their family when they got engaged and got married and had children—they had three children.

My mother, a very intelligent woman, on the way down this path because of her close involvement with my father's family, had said, 'Why don't we speak Dutch at home with the kids?' To be quite blunt, I do not think she cared about Dutch really; she just knew that any language was going to be helpful. Any language at home was going to give you insight into another culture and it was going to help your brain. For a dozen different reasons she knew that it would be good, but my father said no.

My father said, 'We have come to Australia. My family has come to Australia. I am Australian. My kids are going to be born in Australia. My kids are going to be Australian. They are not going to speak Dutch at home. My kids are going to be Australian.' I can only respect his decision. That is how he felt. If you go back 50-plus years, it was not uncommon to feel that way, and he stuck with that. I respect that and I have no desire to undo it, but for many families that is the way it was. So my brother, my late sister and I missed out. Maybe, if it was as simple as just learning another language, it would have been good. Maybe, if it had been as good as immersing yourself in another culture and feeling much more Dutch, it would have been much better. But I respect his decision.

Simultaneously, on my wife, Rebecca's, side, she has a parallel situation with an Italian father who emigrated to Australia when he was in his late teens or perhaps early 20s. He married a woman whose family had been in Australia for quite a few generations. My wife considers herself Italian—Australian first, but if you ask her what her background is, she says, 'I'm Italian.' She is immersed in that and she loves it. She really thoroughly loves it. Those are two people from a similar generation and from similar family structures but with very different pathways and very different decisions—and that is the right one as well for that family. There is nobody to say that whatever a mother and father decide to do in that way is right or wrong. They are both right, whatever they do.

I do think that I probably missed out on a fair bit, and I know that my wife, Rebecca, has gained an enormous amount. Her aunt on the Italian side was her godmother and her uncle was her godfather—santala and santalo—in that family. It is a great family on the Australian side, but really all the action was on the Italian side, and that is very much where her heart is. Why do I share these personal experiences with the house? I do so because it is actually really important.

I recently made a contribution in this chamber on the use and, in many cases, the revival and sharing of Aboriginal language, which is very important in my electorate of Stuart. When you see people in an airport speak a different language, you know they are sharing way more than the words. When they share their language in another country that speaks English, they are sharing a lot more than just a conversation. For friends and constituents in my electorate who are working really hard to revive the use of Aboriginal language, we know that there is nothing better for the continuation, the protection and, in many cases, the revival of Aboriginal culture in South Australia than for younger Aboriginal people to speak their mother tongue, so to speak. It is one of the most important things that they could possibly do.

Beyond that, the stories, the cultures, the practices, the traditions, etc., will flow so much more quickly and deeply if they are shared through Aboriginal language rather than through English. In my travels, I encourage everybody, if they have a multicultural background, to be really proud of it, to share it and to embrace it. When I think about multiculturalism in South Australia, I of course think of our broadly Anglo background in Australia.

I also think of European and Mediterranean migration, and of course I think of Vietnamese and other people. I think, naturally, of Israeli and Middle Eastern people who come to Australia. While all these people and many others have been coming consistently throughout the decades, there have been periods of time when more of them came at one time or another, and they have all contributed.

Right now, in my electorate of Stuart we have a thriving Indian community. It is absolutely fantastic. I would say that just in the last 15 years it has really started to flourish. There is a man called Dr Devinder Grewal, who came to Port Augusta over 40 years ago. He is a successful GP and a successful businessman. He started a motel decades ago as well as an Indian restaurant. That Indian restaurant in Port Augusta has been the catalyst for the current very successful Indian community.

If you wanted to run a good Indian restaurant in Port Augusta—the centre of the universe as far as I am concerned—and you went back 40 years, there would have been a few more challenges running one there than would have been in Gouger Street. You need some Indian people to come and cook and you want some Indian people to come and serve. You want that Indian restaurant to actually be Indian, not just have a sign on the door that says 'Indian restaurant' with Australians running it. He knew that and he did it very well.

That has worked so well in Port Augusta that we now have two Indian restaurants and, as an aside, there is a bit of competition, and that is a good healthy thing. We now have a repurposed set of shops with significant floorspace in a suburban part of Port Augusta that is working as a Sikh community centre and temple. This community has a very honourable ambition to actually build a proper temple in the way we would think of a temple physically. For these people, the space they use as their community centre and as their temple in Port Augusta is every bit as precious and valuable to them in its current state as, I am sure, any temple anywhere in the world. They are a wonderful group of people.

Going back to where I started with this conversation, it is not for me to say, but my observation and my opinion is that the most special thing they do is Sunday nights when the whole local Indian community gathers for a meal in the late afternoon or early evening. Of course it is not for me to say that that is more or less important than prayer or anything else, but I have enjoyed participating myself and, as an outsider, it looks to me that that is actually what is bringing everyone together, from infants who can barely walk all the way through to much older, more senior people.

There are two things I would like to say about this community. One is that they take it upon themselves to say—and I am so proud of this group of people for this—that every one of their families has at least one person working in the local community. That might seem pretty straightforward and it might not seem earthshattering, but if you were to take any group of people, pull them together under any description you might like, you might pull together 200 of them and say, 'Okay, here are 200 people from any cross-section of society in South Australia,' could every single family in that group of 200 say that every single one of them has a job? Could every single person in this 200-person community say that none of their families were on welfare? I think that would be pretty unlikely, to be honest.

It is a fact—and this is not a criticism—that we have people throughout our community who need that support. But this group of people has taken it upon themselves to say, 'Yes, we are Indian. Yes, we are retaining our culture. Yes, we are Australian. Yes, we are here because we want to be.' One of these people is a wonderful community leader, Sunny Singh, who is a councillor in Port Augusta and does an outstanding job. He is a good friend as well, I should declare. They said, 'We are not going to be a burden. We are not going to let anybody even pretend that we are a burden. We are going to make sure that we are contributing'—and they are.

Another thing I want to share with this chamber is that in Port Augusta we have had for a while now the Singh XI. The Singh XI is a cricket team made up of people who all have the last name 'Singh'. I suspect there are one or two others who might rotate through the XI who perhaps have a different last name. They are actually pretty good cricketers and they play in Port Augusta.

It is one of the best ways you could ever imagine to assimilate yourself, to contribute as a group to the local area, to show that you want to participate. You are not trying to be different; you are not trying to be off on the side. You want to maintain your culture and have your Sunday nights and have your temple and have your worship and all those very important things, but you also want to be right in the middle of the community and the culture that you have come to join in.

I speak very highly of this group, and to me that is a fantastic example, but it is not the only example. In Port Augusta, there has been a German club, which closed down quite a few years ago. When the German club closed down because they ran out of active participants, from memory (and I hope I have this right) they gave $120,000 each to two different community groups. They had nearly a quarter of a million dollars by the time they dissolved all of their assets.

They made a choice to split it in half and give it to two local community organisations, and they were not German groups. From memory, they were not even multicultural groups in any way. They took it upon themselves to say, 'We have had a German community here for a long time. Our people have started to drift away and we don't have quite the same unity of purpose to retain the German club that we used to have, so we are putting it back into Port Augusta,' which is absolutely fantastic.

Similarly, the Italian Club is in the process of closing down, which is very sad. There is still a very active Italian community in Port Augusta, but they are going through the same sort of process. These are organisations and people who have decided they are not going to donate this money to another German club in another part of the state or something: they are putting it into their local community, the community they came to join, the community they are members of. I see the same thing in my part of the world, regardless of the ethnic or national or racial background.

How lucky are we? How lucky are we in South Australia to have people who come to our state and join our communities? My experience of the last 30 years is overwhelmingly regional, so that is what I share, but I know that is not the only example around. But how lucky are we, as people who have been in the country longer, to have people come and contribute and share their culture and not be shy and lock it away. They have no shame, as people may have had decades and decades ago, and they really make a strong, active contribution. We are all the better for it.

With this bill, our government is doing the best we can to get the right structure in place. I know there are a range of views on this topic at the moment. We do not fear a range of views; there is nothing wrong with that. We are led not only by our Premier but also by the Hon. Jing Lee, who does an extraordinary amount of outstanding work in this area across the state. She has done so for the 11 years since she and I were elected together, along with the Premier and many other good friends and colleagues who came into parliament at the same time, and she has focused on that work and she does an outstanding job.

Can it be just right for every single one of the dozens and dozens of different multicultural communities or of the many people who have opinions to share on this area of work? Can it be just right for all of those people? No, it cannot. But can it be right in strong majority for what we want to do as a government to develop all the outstanding benefits that come from a genuinely welcoming and active multicultural society in South Australia for the benefit of all South Australians? Can we do it so that it is overwhelmingly right for that? Yes, we can, and that is our intention. That is exactly what we are trying to do with this bill.

I think about Aboriginal people who have been in South Australia and Australia for tens of thousands of years. People talk about millions and billions and sometimes it is a bit hard to absorb. What does that really mean? We think about decades, we think about generations, we think about 2,020 years in one particular context. We can actually absorb what tens of thousands of years, 20,000, 60,000 in some cases, mean. It is pretty amazing, it is pretty special, but it is not too big to say, 'I just can't really comprehend it.' That is incredibly special.

I think about Aboriginal people and tens of thousands of years, through to early European settlers who have been here in some cases for six and seven generations. I am not aware of any, but there might be some eighth generation people in South Australia, and there probably are, but I just do not know any of them.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: My granddaughters.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: The Deputy Premier tells me that in her family there are some eighth generation very young South Australians. That is fantastic. That is all the way through to people like my father, who came here decades ago, and to people who arrived in the last few years. Because of COVID, the last 12 months or so have been a challenging time for people from overseas to come and make their home in Australia. It has not been impossible, but it has been extraordinarily difficult, far more difficult than normal.

We are blessed. We are absolutely blessed to have a safe, welcoming, stable, by world standards extremely well-off society here in South Australia. We are the better for that. We are the better for having Aboriginal people who can trace their roots back 60,000 years. We are better for people who came decades ago, and we are better in South Australia for the people who came in recent years or who will come in the next few years. Long may that continue. I wholeheartedly support the bill.

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (17:42): I rise today to make a contribution on the South Australian Multicultural Bill 2020. I am, like all members, a proud South Australian. One reason why I am so proud to be a South Australian is because of the deep multicultural roots of our state. We are home to people from 200 birthplace groups, who speak approximately 180 languages at home and observe more than 95 religions. This is an amazing feat and it should, and rightly so, be celebrated.

We as a parliament should also endeavour to ensure that multiculturalism can flourish as much is possible here in South Australia. I would like to note that my being here is as the result of immigration. My maternal grandparents, originally from the Portuguese island of Madeira, migrated in the sixties to Australia via Curaçao, which is actually part of the Netherlands Antilles. Like so many families at that time in that postwar period they made the decision to come to Australia to seek a better life for their family than they themselves had.

They moved to a very different place a very long way from home. There was very little prospect, certainly in their minds, that they would ever go back home again, nor were they ever likely to see their families again that they left behind. It was a very big move. In today's environment, taking COVID out of it, where the world has been so connected, it is difficult sometimes to fully comprehend the decision that so many families made in that period to move such a long way across the world in search of a better life.

Importantly, as part of that, they brought with them their culture and ways of doing things, which has all become part of what makes Australia and South Australia what they are today. One of the fantastic things that we get to do as members of parliament is to often visit various multicultural events.

One particular club that I am very proud of in the north-east and love attending is the Campania Club. A number of my colleagues here, the member for King and the Minister for Police and Emergency Services, have spoken about this club. It is a fantastic place in the heart of the north-eastern suburbs. It has fantastic pizzas and pasta. The company is amazing. They even have an indoor playground, which is great when you are bringing the kids along.

Just last week, I was invited along to their thank you dinner. They invite along members of parliament and also some of their key sponsors, and other key groups within the Italian community, to celebrate together. I really thank them for their contribution to this fantastic club. I would particularly like to acknowledge Louisa and John, but the whole of the management committee for all the work that they do. I would also like to acknowledge the fantastic team of volunteers that they have there who cook amazing food as well doing all the other tasks that are required to keep the club running.

Coming back to the bill at hand, it is important to note that since the 1980s, when the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission Act 1980 was passed, our cultural, linguistic and religious make-up has changed significantly, with community values and perceptions being altered as time has gone by. Further, this act was heavily focused on establishing the South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission but does not have an extensive direction on measurable outcomes about multiculturalism in South Australia. Further, there has not been a major review in this area for 30 years. On noting SAMEAC, I would like to acknowledge the Chair of SAMEAC, Norman Schueler OAM, who is with us today.

In 2019, the government conducted a legislative review of the SAMEAC Act through the medium of six community forums, an invitation only stakeholder workshop, written submissions, an online forum and an online survey via YourSAy. What was evident in the consultation stage was that multiculturalism should be modernised to reflect changes in thinking and practices, SAMEAC's functions should be modernised, multicultural principles should be included in the legislation, Aboriginal South Australians should be recognised as the carriers of the original cultures in South Australia, there should be greater transparency with the appointment of SAMEAC members, and the act's language should be contemporised.

The bill before us today reflects much of the feedback that was given. It would allow for an updated and refreshed legislation that reflects developments over the past 40 years, having consideration of broadening the focus from the functions of a body that deals with matters to do with multiculturalism and introducing and legislating for the new concept of interculturalism for the South Australian community. This concept of interculturalism is defined by the bill as:

…policies and practices that recognise and promote in the community—

(a) a deep understanding of, and respect for, all cultures; and

(b) a dynamic, inclusive interaction between diverse groups within the community.

The South Australian Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission will be replaced by the South Australian Multicultural Commission. The bill outlines in clauses 10(e) and 10(f) the functions of the commission to be:

(e) to raise awareness and promote understanding of interculturalism;

(f) to promote the South Australian Multicultural Charter and the advantages of a multicultural society.

The commission continues the legacy of leadership in multicultural affairs, but now with regard to the multicultural charter.

The charter has the effect of being foundational principles that define multiculturalism in the South Australian context. The inclusive and positive language will serve well for future government-funded policies and services in this area. The bill also states that the charter must have provisions that recognise First Nations peoples of South Australia and their role in the diversity of the people of South Australia.

Having the bill introduced is not the end of the matter. Multicultural Affairs intends to inform the community and other stakeholders with information sessions on 28 to 30 October 2020. Multiculturalism is a part of what makes South Australia vibrant and strong, and I cannot imagine this state without the diverse contributions as a result of that. This bill is a step towards taking hold of multiculturalism and morphing it for our own context: to better engage with communities that have for years been much of the bedrock of the success of this state.

I am proud to be part of a government that has the multicultural communities in the forefront of its mind. I commend the Premier's work as the minister in this area and also the assistant minister, the Hon. Jing Lee MLC, for her work. I commend the bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Cowdrey.

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